Chander Singh Nayak, 44, from the village of Sandalpur in Madhya Pradesh Dewas district, was thrilled when he received a call from his daughter on Saturday (March 29). He worked as a laborer in Dholka in the Ahmedabad region of Gujarat and it was reported that Sunita, 22, and her husband Lakhan, 24, were closer to him. “They said they worked at a firecracker factory in Banaskantha in Northern Guirat,” Chander Singh recalled.
Three days later, Sunita and Lakhan died – 21 people were killed in a firecracker factory outside Deesa Town, Banaskantha district on Tuesday morning. The explosion at about 9 a.m. flattened the two-story factory site where they lived and worked, throwing debris and body parts 300 feet away, entering the potato field behind it. The explosion sent out what witnesses said the smoke column “we can see it as high.”
Chander Singh didn’t see the news that morning. “At sometime at the end of the shift, I heard about the explosion at a firecracker factory, and I went to my contractor. He pulled out his phone and confirmed it. I remember I was in a daze,” he was told that his loved one’s remains were taken to his.
Outside the hospital, Lakhan’s aunt Shanti Panwar sat on the porch, and the strange thing was: “I don’t know why they were going there to work. I think the promise of money was too hard to resist – each box was filled with Rs 500 to 1,000. On this promise, Lakhan also brought his siblings – two sisters and one brother, all of them, working in the factory. All of them died in the explosion.
Government and ground reality
As DEESA authorities removed the debris on Wednesday morning, police and district officials held a press conference announcing that they had arrested the factory owner Khubchandbhai Mohanani, his son Deepakbhai Khubchandbhai Mohanani.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Madhya Pradesh Pradesh Chief Ministers announced the announcement of Rs 20 lakh of former Gratia to the relatives of the deceased, with Rs 50,000 being injured. Six people were injured, including a 3-year-old child, some from outside the factory. In addition, Gujarat Chief Minister announced that the former Gratia of the relatives of the deceased was Rs 4 lakh and the injured was Rs 50,000. All 21 people killed in the explosion were migrant workers from the Harda and Dewas areas of Madhya Pradesh, including eight children, three of whom were 3 years old. There are 24 people in the building working and living together.
Although the remains of 19 victims have been identified, two factory workers have been declared “missed” given that their bodies are too few and they need to be identified.
Banaskantha District Magistrate Mihir Patel told local reporters that the factory (Deepak Fatakda) does not have a license to make firecrackers. Patel said it already has licenses to store and sell them, but Patel said that it has expired until the end of 2024.
Police announced they found aluminum powder and yellow glucose at the factory, both used to make explosive substances, and concluded that the materials could cause the explosion to explode as much as the explosion.
In the first information report (FIR) registered by the police, local tax officials said the plant did not have fire safety equipment. FIR invoked the charges of murder and endangering life and personal safety by Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita, as well as the Explosives Act of 1908, the Explosives Act of 1884 and the Explosives Act of 1884.
But Patel told reporters that local police inspected the factory just 15 days ago and found no materials that indicate that biscuits were being made. “After their permit expired, a renewal application was filed with the SDM (Second Magistrate Judge) office. It was for this reason that the police went to check the place.” Police have published reports against the update, but the DM said it was not because there were manufacturing materials there.
Police said they are investigating the source of the factory chemicals. More than 24 hours after the explosion, there was a series of firecracker yarns on the site of the factory, the smell of gunpowder in the air, and small spherical Sutri bombs scattered across the debris. Citizen authorities are working with Earthlings, and investigators take stock of everything left in a row of factories in warehouses.
According to the latest available data on accidental deaths compiled by the National Crime Records Agency in 2022, 60 fires occurred in India in factories making combustible materials such as cookies and matchboxes, resulting in 66 deaths and 32 injuries. The most of these events were recorded in states such as Tamil Nadu (18), Bihar (9), Jharkhand (9), Uttar Pradesh (9), and Rajasthan (9).
Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani and family members of the victim of firecracker explosion at Deesa Civil Hospital on April 2, 2025. Image source: Vijay Soneji
First responder
The morning of April 2 is just like any other working days in the Majirana family in the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation area outside the Disa Railway Station. Babubhai Madabhai Majirana, 32, has begun preparing his children to go to school as his wife and mother prepare to lean towards farmland where they have worked all their lives.
Rajesh Nayak, 22, is preparing for the work of the day at his home in Majirana, at the Deepak Fatakda factory. He is very familiar with the work. Rajesh worked in the same factory for 17 days at Holi, allegedly making firecrackers.
“The kids are still sleeping on the upper floor. We just finished our breakfast and have already started working hard to make the sutli bomb. At around 8:45, my 3-year-old sister walked out of the factory to fill some drinking water. I turned around and was shocked to hit: a deafening sound, then it rang in my ears, I fell to the ground, and I stayed in my sister again, who leaned on Rajesh, his sister, his sister. Rajesh said, “I jumped around, looked around and rushed out.” We were then taken to the civil hospital in Dissa. ”
Majirana heard the explosion and he was in Deesa town, putting down his youngest daughter in his school. “I saw the smoke rise and thought it must be a pole on fire, so I rushed home. As I got closer, I realized what was going on. We knew it was firecracker god, but we didn’t know what was going on with the work there,” Majirana said. His mother Moriben was at home when the explosion occurred. “I’ve never seen anything so terrible. The smoke rose so high,” she said.
“All I could hear is the constant explosion and screaming of people. I rushed into the factory to help, but all I could see was smoke.” “Like the smoke cleared, I saw – there were corpses everywhere, body parts. It was horrible.”
He said he started cleaning everything. “I brought about 11 bodies from inside the factory. Other farm workers in the area helped, too. We put the remains on the tractor and from there the ambulance took them away.”
As hospital authorities arrived throughout Tuesday, chaos and chaos were brewing as families began to get there from Madhya Pradesh.
Confusion around the body
“I arrived at the hospital around midnight,” Chander Singh said, adding that he and other relatives were waiting in the hospital all night. “We don’t know where the remains are. We’re not even sure our son and daughter are dead because we don’t see their bodies,” he said. “I don’t know why no one would talk to us or give us any details. Some police officers kept asking us to wait.” They drank some water, some sugar cane juice, and then waited. On Wednesday morning, they were escorted to the ward by police.
Lakhan’s brother Dulichand Kamal had arrived in Deesa by then. “After entering the room, I saw the police waving the door from inside. Then, one of them listed the list of people they said they died in the explosion and asked us to sign the documents. We refused because we hadn’t seen the body yet.”
By the afternoon, Chander Singh was told that the remains of his loved ones were taken back to their hometown in Madhya Pradesh. “Police officials told me I could ride with the body in the ambulance, but I kept insisting on waiting because more of our family members were on the way. They took them away anyway.”
Frustrations of family members were established, with some sitting in front of the hospital protesting, demanding that the bodies of loved ones be handed over to them. Opposition politicians, including Congress MLA Jignesh Mevani, participated in the protests and claimed that the government led by Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat’s Bharatiya Janata party attempted to “hide the body” to cover up the owners of the factory. The family also wrote a petition to the chief minister of Gujarat alleging that they did not allow the bodies of their loved ones to be identified. As the day came, the depressed family members eventually left Deesa to their hometown in Madrid’s Madhya Pradesh, and the body arrived on Wednesday night.
The investigation begins
Investigators in Gujarat have so far begun visiting the locations of the incidents and he has begun to piece together the order of the incidents. As investigators work, the village is full of questions: Why do factory manufacturing only have storage and transaction licenses? Why don’t the authorities seal the factory when the police visited? What triggered the explosion?
Many, such as senior journalist Pankaj Soneji, questioned why authorities initially provided journalists with another reason for the explosion. “At first, authorities claimed that it must be a boiler explosion. But there is no boiler in the place. Now, they say it may be a chemical.”
“I have been reporting in northern Gujarat for decades and I know that this factory owner has monopolized the industry in the region. How can the regional authorities not know?” said Tapan Jaiswal, editor of Daily BK News, a Gujarati local language Broadsheet.
He said it was the initial reports that forced the Gujarat government to establish a special investigation team with Gandhi Nagar officials to investigate the incident. “If the factory had been working in the area for a long time, it would be impossible for local police to investigate it fairly.”
abhinay.lakshman@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunalini Mathew
publishing – April 5, 2025 06:00 AM IST
